I am so happy to be sharing this report on Lactnet:
I work in a hospital with a level III NICU. I work postpartum so I
have a lot of experience with all the pitfalls of caring for mothers
who are trying to spend as much time as they can with their babies who
are patients in a different unit. But progress is being made!
The NICU have started what they call 'kangaroo admission'. For premature
babies, or babies of diabetic mothers, or any baby who needs close
monitoring but
no technical life support systems, the baby is administratively a
patient of the NICU while s/he stays with mother, on her body, and a
NICU nurse comes to the birthing room to observe the baby from birth,
feed it donor
milk if mother is diabetic (to avoid plummeting blood glucose which
might necessitate admission to the physical NICU), and do whatever
other monitoring is necessitated by the baby's condition.  The ICU
nurse
continues to care for the baby after mother and baby come to
postpartum together.  Best of both worlds - mothers and babies stay
together, staff on postpartum can support mother and the NICU nurse
makes sure baby is OK by being present to a degree our own
staffing simply doesn't allow.
Parents LOVE it. Naturally the babies are happy, and more stable, and
breastfeeding is easier - and the NICU staff
are proud to bursting point to be involved in something that for
Norway is very innovative. We can care for the mother more easily
because she is totally present as long as the baby is with her. It is
such a change - instead of this
distressed facial expression on the mother because she is so far away
from her baby, or just never finding her in her room to see what she
needs from us, we come in and find everyone looking deliriously happy.
Parents have been able to be with their babies as much as they can
manage, up to now, but it required sitting in an armchair in a larger
room, possibly with multiple babies in the room, rather than lying in
their own beds with the baby, by themselves except for when their
nurse is there.

I think this is the most welcome change in procedure since we
abolished our healthy newborn nursery in 1990. It is so beautiful to
see everyone collaborating to keep mothers and babies together!

Rachel Myr
Kristiansand, Norway

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